


Loving you was like going to war

by dwellingondreams



Series: Ghost Town [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 1980s, 1990s, Abusive Parents, Abusive Relationships, Adolescent Sexuality, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Bad Parenting, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Bullying, Child Abuse, Depression, Domestic Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Explicit Language, F/M, Gangs, High School, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Horny Teenagers, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Internalized Misogyny, Mental Health Issues, Misogyny, POV Alternating, POV Third Person, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, Present Tense, Racism, Recreational Drug Use, Sexism, Sexist Language, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Tension, Slut Shaming, Small Towns, Teen Alice Cooper/FP Jones, Teen Angst, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Romance, Teen Years, Teenage Drama, Teenage Rebellion, Teenagers, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Sex, Young Alice Cooper/FP Jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-10-20 07:32:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17618138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "I never came back the same." - Warsan ShireAll he can think of is Alice waiting somewhere in the wings, probably picking at her nails and running through her ‘routine’ under her breath. Her body doesn’t hold many mysteries for him. They’ve both seen each other naked before, even if they’ve never fucked. They’ve been swimming and changed hastily and walked in on one another half-dressed. They’ve gotten their shirts off before while kissing, pawed at each other’s chests and legs and asses.But then she comes out in a cut-off fringe top and Daisy Dukes, wobbling slightly in borrowed heels that are too small for her, and he stops thinking so… pragmatically. He stops thinking at all. Alice squints in the spotlight and runs her hand through her tangled blonde hair, pulls out her trusty scrunchy, lets it fall to the ground. Her legs seem impossibly long and her face seems impossibly bright, stained a greenish bluey red from all the neon lighting around the bar. It casts a weird halo around her head, like some kind of futuristic angel.(FP and Alice, or what small towns breed in angry children).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to an earlier fic. You do not need to have read You're a ghost town I'm too patriotic to leave. However, there are some changes made from canon that carry over into this fic. Ages and circumstances are slightly tweaked. This will often contradict the 1990s canon established by the flashback episode in Season 3. My interpretation of the parents of Riverdale, their pasts, and their personalities may at times match the show's, and at other times differ.

JUNE 1982

FP’s mom dies on a muggy day in June. She goes for a drive after a fight with his dad and is hit by a car full of drunk teenagers on their way back from a party. Her Honda Accord has to be fished out of the river. She didn’t drown though; she was dead on impact. Sheriff Keller told FP’s dad that to comfort him; he was eavesdropping from the kitchen. Keller has a son named Tom, who plays baseball and is three years older than FP. Tom still has a mom; she picks him up from Little League so he doesn’t have to walk home, and bakes cupcakes for school bake sales.

Even when FP’s mom was alive, she never baked cupcakes.

After the funeral Dad tells him there are leftovers in the fridge. A few people brought them casseroles. The he goes upstairs with a bottle of whiskey and tells FP to go out and play. Except it is a sweltering June afternoon and drizzling, warm, sweaty rain. FP sits in the kitchen for a while and looks at the wrinkled, yellowed photos stuck to the fridge. The most recent one is from his first day of kindergarten. Mom crouches next to him at the end of their gravelly driveway, smiling wanly, her hair a frizzy mess.

He misses the smell of her hairspray and the baby powder she put in her shoes. He wants to feel her cracked nails crinkle through his hair. He wants to sit on the couch with her and watch reruns of Charlie’s Angels. Dad doesn’t let him watch TV with him. Dad doesn’t let him do a lot of things that Mom did. The kitchen clock keeps ticking and the faucet keeps dripping. The rain outside lightens a little to a sprinkle, peppering the window.

FP goes outside. Outside is grey and humid and grimy. He dribbles a wet basketball on the back patio, then walks through the tall grass of their cramped back yard. Dad needs to mow the lawn. Mom was fighting with him about that before she died. And other things FP is not supposed to know about. His sneakers are getting soaked. He pokes his fingers through the battered chain-link fence and listens to a neighbor’s dog bark several houses down.

After a few minutes he walks around the side of the house, examining the faded blue-gray paint and the peeling shingles. He comes out in front of the small garage where Dad’s truck is parked, and then he notices the girl. She is staring through the fence at him. She is tall and skinny for her age, which can’t be much older than him. She has stringy blonde hair pulled back from her pointed face with a faded blue scrunchy. Her shirt is too small for her, and her shorts are too big. One sock is falling down around her ankle.

He thinks maybe he has seen her once or twice before, going in and out of the house with a blonde woman with short hair and a hot pink purse. “Who’re you?” he says.

“I live here,” she scrunches up her sharp nose and puckered mouth and scowls at him, voice high and reedy. “I know who you are,” she says it in a sing-song voice, like they’re playing a game at school. “FP Jones. What’s FP short for?”

“None of your business,” FP juts his lower lip out in his best imitation of his father’s sneer. He wishes he was taller. He wishes his hair was shorter. Mom was going to cut it this weekend. Now she can’t. Either Dad will do it or he’ll have to himself with the bathroom scissors. He hates the bathroom scissors and the clack clack noise they make, like a typewriter. He balls his clammy hands into fists at his sides. He hates her scrunched up face and her scrunched up hair and her scrunched up voice.

“Fine, be rude,” the girl says snottily. She crosses her bony arms. “I’m Alice Smith. I live next door. We moved in last week. For your information,” she adds, arching her pale eyebrows. 

“You live with your mom,” he says. “I’ve seen her.” He thinks, and then grins, even though he doesn’t know what it means. He just knows it will hurt. “My dad says she’s a slut.”

Alice Smith goes the color of a blank notebook page and then slams her hands up against the face. “Shut up,” she snarls, getting right up against it, like she’d throttle him if she could. “You shut up! Your dad’s a liar! And he’s crazy, my mom said so, he went to Vietnam and killed babies.” She sticks her tongue out against the metal, but pulls back before he can jab it with a dirty finger. 

“My dad’s not crazy, he’s a vet-or-in,” FP enunciates carefully, and then glowers. “And he has a truck. Your dad doesn’t even have a car.”

“I don’t have a dad, dumbass,” Alice retorts, and then bites her lip, faltering. She glances down at the muddy ground. The rain has nearly stopped now.

“I don’t have a mom anymore,” FP adds, not to comfort her but because he hasn’t talked to anyone besides Dad in a few days. Even if she’s a bitch and her mom is a slut, like Dad said. “She died. Did your dad die?”

“Shut up,” Alice kicks at some broken glass and rocks. “I don’t know. I never met him. My mom says he was an asshole.”

“My mom calls my dad an asshole a lot,” FP reflects, then frowns. “Um- she called him. She got her neck broke. In a car crash. It was in the newspaper,” he points out almost proudly. The last time they were in the newspaper was when Dad spent the night in jail. He wonders what a broken neck looks like. In the coffin Mom looked okay. Like a big doll version of herself. Her skin was like candle wax. He’d touched her hand. Someone had fixed her nail polish. He liked it better cracked.

“Was there a lot of blood?” Alice whispers with interest, eyes wide. She has green eyes with blue specks in them. They remind him of the beach. His eyes are brown and boring and squinty like Dad’s. Whenever he thinks of blood he thinks of squirting ketchup on a hot dog bun, like when they still had a grill and Dad would barbeque in the summertime, when he was really little. He choked on a hot dog when he was three and Dad hit him across the back until he spit it up and Mom cried. 

“I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “I don’t think so. She went in the river. They had to pull her out with a big crane. My dad didn’t let me watch.”

“I wish my dad was dead,” Alice says, with a thoughtful glint in her beachy eyes. “Everyone is nice to you when your mom or dad are dead. But he’s just…,” she shrugs. “Not here.”

“I guess,” FP puffs out his cheeks and then blows a breath of hot summer air. “I wish she was here. She was gonna cut my hair.”

Alice wrinkles her nose and barks a laugh. “You look like a little girl.”

FP flushes bright red. “I don’t! Shut up! I’m not a girl!”

“I said you looked like one. Retard,” she sticks her tongue out again. “Not that you are one. How old are you anyways, six?” Her voice goes all high and scratchy.

“I’m gonna be eight in-,” he counts in his head, “three weeks. I’m not six!” he adds defensively. “I’m gonna grow really soon. The doctor said so.”

“You’re still a baby,” Alice says triumphantly. “I’m gonna be a fourth grader. You’ll just be a third grade baby.”

“Fuck you,” FP’s nostrils flair. He kicks the fence between them. “I’ll kill you.”

“How? With your little baby hits?” she goads, and he looks around for the end of the fence, at the road. He takes a menacing step in that direction, but Alice has already lost interest in her teasing. She looks almost… hopeful. “My mom can cut your hair,” she says, and then a little quieter, “if you don’t call her a slut.”

“What’s a slut?” FP’s question, some of the fire in his cheeks fading.

Alice looks at him like he’s stupid, and lifts her chin up imperiously. “Someone who kisses lots of guys. Don’t you know anything?”

“I know you suck,” he snaps.

“Fine,” she turns dramatically on her heel, shoes squelching in the mud. “Look like a little girl. See if I care, FP. What’s it short for? Fart Puke?”

“Fuck you, fucker!” he kicks the fence again, but she stops pretending to leave. She turns back around. “If you say fucker in front of my mom she’ll beat your ass.”

“Not as bad as my dad,” FP mutters, and they share a brief glance of understanding. He walks down to the street and around the fence, into Alice’s front yard. They stand next to each other for the first time. She is taller than him, but not by too much. If he stands up on his tiptoes they’re almost the same height.

Alice Smith’s house is even smaller and dirtier than FP’s. The wallpaper is peeling and the floors are dusty and it smells musty. Her mom is smoking a cigarette and watching Dallas. She looks a lot like Alice, more like a big sister than a mom. She is tall and skinny like her daughter, with short spiky hair like Madonna. It is a paler shade of blonde than Alice’s, like bleach. Her hands are cold and dry. She tells FP to call her Shelly, and she doesn’t call his dad crazy or a baby killer in front of him.

“What kinda cut you want, kiddo?” she asks, when he is seated on their squashy couch. 

FP thinks for a few moments, and then, “Can you cut it all off?”

“You want it buzzed?” Shelly blinks at him, then shrugs. “You’re lucky I still got my ex’s razor. We’ll see what we can do. FP. Weird name, huh? What’s it short for?”

Because she is cutting his hair the way he wants, he has to be nice to her. “Forsythe Pendleton,” he mumbles, staring at the floor. Their carpet is stained in multiple places. Alice shrieks with laughter, then flinches away from Shelly’s smack. “Don’t be rude, Ally.”

“I’m not,” Alice hisses under her breath, but then follows them into the kitchen to watch FP bend his head over the sink while Shelly cuts and then shaves his long, dark hair off. It takes a while. When she is done, he runs his hands over his head. He thinks he feels a bump somewhere.

“Hell, guess you won’t be getting lice anytime soon,” Shelly snorts, and then elbows Alice. “Tell him he looks handsome, baby.”

“You look like ass,” says Alice, who then ducks another blow from her mother, who pulls her hair anyways.

“How ‘bout I shave your head bald too, then, Little Miss Bitchy? Jesus Christ,” Shelly exhales as Alice peels off into the living room. “Girl’s got a mouth on her. Guess she gets it from me. You go home now, FP Jones. Tell your old man I’m sorry about your mom. She seemed like a nice lady.”

“She was a nice lady,” says FP. Everyone said so at the funeral, anyways. She was always nicer than Dad. He spends a while throwing rocks at passing cars down on the corner before he really goes home. Dad is drunk and rattling around in the kitchen. He gapes at FP for a few moments when he comes in, then bellows, “The fuck you do to your hair?”

“I got it cut,” FP edges towards the staircase, still rubbing his head. He likes the way it feels. He looks tough now, like a soldier, like Dad, although Dad doesn’t have much hair at all anymore. “Alice’s mom did it.”

“The hell is Alice?” Dad slurs.

“She lives next door,” FP tries to explain, but the look on his father’s face darkens all the more. He scampers up the stairs, and Dad comes thundering after him. “I didn’t stay there long or anything, she just cut it! She said it was okay!”

“Your mother’s dead two days and you’re already cozying up with the whores next door,” Dad yells, and FP reaches his room, tries to shut the door, then gives up and dives onto the bed instead. Dad’s belt makes a slappy noise when he takes it off, and then the metal parts clink clink. He tries to cry so Dad will feel bad but his eyes just hurt instead. 

He lies face-down on the bed until his back stops hurting as much. One day when he’s big Dad will take off his belt and FP will grab it out of his hands and choke it with him like Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars. One day he will ride a motorcycle out of town and be a rock star. One day he will forget the smell of Mom’s hairspray and the feeling of her nails on his scalp. One day he won’t be almost eight anymore, and everything will hurt a little less.

But it isn’t one day yet.


	2. Chapter 2

FEBRUARY 1984

Alice hates the winter. She hates having to wear two sweaters and double socks to bed because Mom couldn’t pay for heat again, she hates watching her breath mist in front of her, she hates trudging through brown and grey sludge on her way to school, and she hates her stupid worn down coat and her ragged scarf and gloves. She can’t even ride her bike; it’s the middle of February, and the snow shows no sign of melting anytime soon.

The wind lashes down the length of the grey street, and she ducks her head as she tramps across the front yard and onto the curb. FP is standing by the fence, waiting for her, his hands jammed in his too-big jacket pockets. She’s pretty sure that jacket is actually his dad’s, not that Mr. Jones would even notice. He gets up before dawn to go work at the factory, or he’s passed out hung-over and doesn’t go to work at all.

FP’s dad is a good-for-nothing drunk, and everyone knows it. Even Mom says so, and she’s a sleazy little skank, according to the same ‘everyone’. Alice doesn’t like most people. And she definitely doesn’t trust them. They sure as hell don’t trust her. She might be only a fifth grader, but she’s not an idiot. She knows what she is. White trash. Wrong side of the tracks. Some stupid slut’s dirty kid. No dad. No family. Can barely keep a roof over their heads.

Last week Hermione Gomez said that her mom said that Alice should be in foster care because her mom was a welfare queen who’d probably get herself knocked up again soon just to live off the system even more. Last week Alice got called down to the principal’s office for pulling out a hunk of Hermione’s pretty black hair. She hates Hermione. Hermione’s parents go to church like three times a week and her clothes are always ironed and her lunch is always packed.

“It’s fucking freezing,” mutters FP, who is nine now and will be ten this summer. He’s still short and skinny but he keeps his hair buzzed just like how her mom cut it two summers ago. Sometimes his head is covered in scabs which he picks at until they bleed. They don’t have class together, being in different grades, but they see each other at lunch and gym and recess. Only FP only sits with her at lunch and not recess because he’s afraid if people see him playing with a girl they’ll call him a faggot.

“No shit,” snaps Alice as they set off down the street, skirting around gaping potholes and patches of black ice. “What’re you, some kind of genius?”

“Shut up,” says FP, cheeks cherry red from the cold. He doesn’t have a scarf, or a hat, or gloves. She debates giving him her scarf, but he’ll probably just throw it back at her or curse her out. She doesn’t even know why she’s friends with him, except that they live next door to each other and they know each other’s secrets, or at least some of them.

She knows that his dad drinks because when he’s not drunk he has nightmares about the war, and he knows that her mom had her when she was sixteen. If any of them ever snitches about it, they have permission to beat the shit out of each other. Alice is pretty sure she’d win. FP’s all bark and no bite. He’s always saying he’s gonna hit her but he never does it. Probably because she’s a girl. Only FP’s dad probably beat his mom too, and she was a girl. Maybe it’s different when you’re older. She’d never marry a guy like Mr. Jones. He’s gross and smells like beer and engine grease.

They could catch the bus, but neither of them likes to ride it. The bus driver always gives them dirty looks and the other kids are always tripping FP or throwing paper balls at her, and then usually FP gets into a fight and the driver threatens to pull over and call the cops before they can even get to school. Alice doesn’t really care if FP wants to get in trouble, but he always manages to drag her into it too, even when she didn’t even do anything.

It’s a twenty minute walk to school and neither of them says much of anything until they’re at the gates and joining the crowd of kids surging off the buses, rushing for the front doors. “Where d’you wanna sled after school?” Alice asks as they push through the horde. “We could sneak over by Thornhill again.” Everyone knows the creepy Blossom woods are the best play to go sledding in the winter and play manhunt in the summer. So long as the groundskeeper doesn’t catch you. They say he has a hook hand and he kills teenagers who have sex there.

“I can’t,” FP says shortly, and a little guiltily, she suspects. “I’m going to Fred’s house after school.”

“Again?” Alice snaps, stopping in her tracks, and ignoring the people elbowing by her. “FP! This is bullshit, you can’t just ditch me for Freddy Andrews.” Fred Andrews is such an idiot, anyways. He’s only popular because his dad runs a construction company. People are basically paid to like him. And because he’s good at sports. He runs like a retard, Alice thinks. And now he’s stealing her friend. Her only friend in the whole shitty world.

FP shrugs, avoiding eye contact. “We’re building a fort in his backyard. Plus his mom lets me stay for dinner”

Alice flushes with anger and embarrassment. FP only wants to be best friends with Fred now because Fred’s rich. Not really, not rich like the Lodges or the Blossoms, but rich compared to people like the Smiths and the Joneses. Fred’s mom stays at home and cooks dinner for the family every night, like something out of Leave It To Beaver. She probably has a perm and wears a flowery apron and hums while baking a pie.

“He doesn’t even like you,” she sneers instead. “He just feels bad for you, FP. You wait and see. You think his parents want you around? You’re like trash to them. You stink,” she adds pointedly, wrinkling her nose up. FP stands there staring at her, eyes wide, and she feels a flash of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t have-

He slams his hands into her chest, sending her stumbling backwards into a first grader. “Fuck you! Stupid bitch!” The first grader squeals loudly and darts into a classroom like a little pig.

Alice shrieks in alarm and regains her footing on the slippery tiled floor, intending to claw his stupid goddamn eyes out, but he’s already disappeared into the crowded hall. Instead she stands there, fists clenched, shoulders heaving up and down with fury. Well, fuck him too. He’s just a stupid little boy. When Fred stops pretending to like him, he’ll come running back to her like a kicked puppy.

What does Fred Andrews know, anyways? He doesn’t know shit about FP, or Southside, or anything that matters. He’s just some dumb spoiled brat whose parents are always up his ass about how smart and athletic he is. Yeah. See how long that lasts. She hopes they get divorced. She hopes his dad cheats on his mom with his secretary or something. She doesn’t get why Fred Andrews deserves to be happy and she and FP deserve jack squat.

“Are you okay?” someone asks tentatively, and she whirls around to face Mary Walsh, who is only a third grader, two years younger than her and a year below FP and stupid Fred. Alice doesn’t know much about Mary except her mom died when she was a baby so everyone is supposed to feel bad for her and her dad. She has carroty red hair she keeps in two pigtails, and she’s always in something pink.

“I’m fine,” Alice snaps, and stalks away, rolling her eyes. Right, like she needs Mary Walsh sucking up to her. At least Mary has a dad. Alice would rather a dad who was there and actually did stuff with her instead of a mom who is there and who wishes she’d never been born. She said it. She said it while she was high and she never apologized. She probably doesn’t even remember saying it. Alice does. Alice remembers everything everyone says.

She’s in a bad mood all morning, ignoring the whispers and giggles directed her way as she sulks in the back of the class, picking at loose threads in her faded sweater and her washed out jeans. No one really bullies her in class, but they don’t have to. She knows what they think. She’s heard it all before. She asked for new clothes for Christmas, and all she got were some hand me downs from one of Mom’s work friends, another waitress at Pop’s. They’re not even in style. She looks like someone’s grandma.

At lunch she purposely avoids looking for FP and sits alone by the trash cans, picking at her tuna fish sandwich that she made for herself when she got up this morning. It smells weird. At a table nearby, Hermione Gomez has bought lunch. Alice watches her open her milk and pick up her greasy slice of pizza. It probably tastes like shit, she tells herself to feel better. She hopes Hermione throws it up.

After ten or so minutes, she hears the sound of footsteps. Alice looks up warily to see FP and, guess who, Fred Andrews coming over. FP has no lunch, again, and Fred is holding his bagged lunch his mom probably made for him. She probably kissed his sandwich, too. “What?” Alice scowls at them, hunching her shoulders. Doesn’t Fred have other people to sit with? FP’s lucky she doesn’t throw this sandwich at him. She’s too hungry, though. She takes another mincing, resentful bite of it, studying them angrily as they sit down across for her.

“Hi Alice,” Fred says. He even smiles at her. He’s missing some baby teeth. He looks like a dumbass. FP says nothing, studying the graffiti covered table top, until Fred elbows him, and then he says hoarsely, “Sorry for pushing you.” Fred gives him another nudge. “And calling you a stupid bitch. You’re not stupid.”

Alice is sort of glad he didn’t lie to her face and say she wasn’t a bitch. She knows she’s a bitch. Mom says it’s genetic. Smith women are bitches. Angry bitches, crazy bitches, dumb bitches, skanky bitches, it doesn’t matter. They’re all bitches. It’s not her fault. Better an angry bitch than a dumb sweetheart. That’s what Mom says, and for once Alice can agree with her.

“Whatever,” she says loftily. “I guess I accept your shitty, bad, really dumb apology. That Fred made you say,” she narrows her eyes at Fred. “Why’re you sitting here?”

“You looked kind of lonely,” Fred says, as if it’s obvious. “Plus FP told me what happened, and I felt bad.” He hesitates, and then adds, “You can come over to my house after school and help us with the fort, Alice. If you want.”

Alice gapes at him. FP looks a little surprised too. “What?” she says, because she can’t think of what else to say.

Fred goes kind of red, from his forehead to his round chin. He has shiny brown hair and big brown eyes that remind her of a dog’s. They’re trusting, somehow. He probably has a dog. Alice hates dogs. One bite her when she was a toddler, and Mom had to hit it with a weight to get it off her. It got blood everywhere, and she still has the scar on her thigh. She pretends sometimes she can still see the teeth marks.

“You and FP were friends first,” he explains awkwardly. “So… I guess that means we can be friends too. That way no one gets left out.” What else has FP been telling him? She glares at him, and FP just glares back. Yeah, so much for his stupid ‘apology’. He only apologized so Fred wouldn’t get mad at him and not let him come over to build their dumb fort and eat cookies or whatever they do.

“You think I want to be friends with you?” she snaps. “Yeah, right. I don’t want to come over to your house, I don’t want to build your stupid fort, and I don’t want to be your friend, Fred!” She doesn’t. People already look down their noses at her. She doesn’t need them doing it even more because now she and FP are trailing after Fred like two stray cats or something. 

Fred looks taken aback, visibly recoiling in his seat, face wounded. “Oh. Uh- okay. Sorry-,”

“Why are you always such a bitch?” FP demands, leaning across the table to glower at her. “He was just being nice! He doesn’t really want you to come over! You’d just ruin everything anyways, like you always do!” 

Alice stares at him in shock for the second time that day, and then jumps up from her seat and walks very quickly out of the lunchroom before either of them can see her start crying. She manages to hold it off until she gets to the nearest bathroom. Then she cries, ugly snotting baby tears, eyes red and puffy, throat aching. She doesn’t even know why she’s so upset. So what if FP doesn’t want to be friends anymore? She doesn’t need him. She doesn’t need anyone.

But the walk home by herself at the end of the day is very, very lonely. She takes much longer than usual, stopping to kick at slush and drag a stick along a the ground, and when she finally gets home the house is cold and dark. She wraps herself in a thick quilt and watches TV on the couch, eating what’s left of a deflated bag of chips as the sun sinks down below the horizon outside.

There’s a knock at the door at around five thirty. She knows it can’t be Mom because Mom doesn’t get home from work until eleven tonight, and she never knocks, anyways. Maybe it’s a salesman or something. Alice peers out through the foggy living room window, and recognize the skinny shape on the doorstep. After a few moments, she opens the door, and crosses her arms, looking at FP, shivering on the stoop.

“I didn’t stay for dinner,” he says, and Alice lets him inside, against her better judgement. 

He looks around. “Why’s it so cold in here?”

“My mom forgot about the bill,” Alice mutters. Neither of them say anything for almost a full minute, shifting around. FP huddles into his beaten up coat and scuffs his wet sneakers on the floor. He doesn’t even have proper snow boots. 

“You don’t ruin everything,” he says at last. “I just said that ‘cause I was mad. I dunno. Fred wants to be friends. He’s nice. I don’t even know why he’s nice to me. Maybe he feels bad. But I don’t care. I like being friends with him. I’m not gonna stop just because you don’t want to be around anyone else.”

Alice swallows back the lump in throat, and gives a jerky nod. “Okay. Fine. Sorry for… for yelling at him. I guess he didn’t really deserve it.”

There’s another moment of silence, and then FP says, in a more casual tone, “D’you wanna watch a movie?”

Alice looks at him, and then smiles thinly. “Yeah. But not Rocky. We’ve watched that tape a million times.”


	3. Chapter 3

OCTOBER 1987

FP can count the number of times he’s been trick-or-treating on one hand, but now that’s he thirteen he finally has something to look forward to. Egging the shit out of people’s cars and houses. Michael Myers mask in hand, he bikes down the slick street, dodging rain puddles and sodden leaves. Over the course of seventh grade and the summer before eighth he shot up nearly five inches in height and put on at least thirty pounds; he’ll never be built the way Fred is, broad-shouldered and husky and square-jawed, but he’s no longer a scrawny little stick with a shaved head. 

He’s started to let his hair grow out again for the first time in five years, and while it’s not as long as he’d like, it’s starting to piss off Dad, and that’s all he can really ask for. Dad’s still an asshole, but FP’s not some scared little kid he can chase up the stairs anymore. At this point FP’s a hell of a lot better at dodging, and he can easily outrun his old man, unless he gets cornered. One of these days, he’s going to match Dad in height, if not weight, and then they’ll see what happens.

FP likes being a newfound teenager. He likes the fact that people on the street don’t ignore him or grimace in dismay anymore; instead they cross the street to avoid him, hunch their shoulders, lower their heads, and walk a little faster. They’re scared of him, or at least wary. He likes that. Fred thinks it’s sick, but what the fuck does Fred know? People come up to him just to say hello and tell him to wish his mom and dad well. Fred was ‘raised right’. He’s a ‘fine young man’.

FP is, to quote his teachers, ‘a juvenile sentence waiting to happen’ and ‘a real wise guy’. The latter is rarely said in an affectionate manner. If Fred is the town’s golden boy, proof that they’re all such saints with perfect children and perfect lives, FP is a horror story. He doesn’t mind all that much. Horror stories draw the big crowds. People pay money to see them. Everyone remembers the guy with a scary mask and a knife. No one could give a shit about the latest iteration of Clark Kent.

He doesn’t have a knife yet, but he’s saving up money to buy one from this Serpent guy he knows. Well, that and a car. He’d rather have a car than a knife. Knife can’t really take you anywhere except jail. But it will probably get these high school assholes off his back. In retrospect, insulting Hiram Lodge’s new car probably wasn’t the best idea he’s ever had. But what kind of fucking asshole drives a Corvette Roadster? Fucking prick with his pansy ass white convertible. FP shoulda keyed it while he was at it.

He brakes suddenly in front of the Andrews’ home; all the lights are on, streaming cheerful lamp light across the damp lawn, and the jack-o-lanterns on the front porch are glowing. FP dons his mask and walks quickly up the driveway, weaving around the back to where he knows Fred’s bedroom window is. He catches a glimpse of Mrs. Andrews in the kitchen, taking something out on the oven, the phone balanced on her shoulder. Mrs. Andrews is nice, although a little less nice now that he’s started to slick his hair back and cut up his jeans. He can’t really blame her.

He plucks up a few pebbles from the patio and starts winging them at Fred’s window; he can faintly hear music blaring. Fred’s going through a real Beastie Boys thing. FP prefers R.E.M., although he’s been listening to Appetite for Destruction non-stop since it came out in July. Fred’s dad gets him all the new records; he’s friends with the guy who runs the music store. FP has sang “Welcome to the Jungle” so many times he’s pretty sure he could run through it in his sleep.

After a few unsuccessful attempts, he lands a direct hit or two on the window pane, and several moments later Fred pokes his head out into the growing darkness. He spots FP’s mask immediately and pulls back a little in alarm, causing FP to nearly bust open laughing, double over and cackling as he tears off the mask. “Fucking pussy!” he hollers up at Fred, who blanches. 

“Dude, shut up! My mom will hear you!” Fred hisses, and disappears back into his bedroom. Still snickering, FP sidles up to the backdoor like a stray looking for scraps. That’s what Alice would probably say, but there’s a reason she’s not fucking invited. Now that she’s a freshman in high school she’s suddenly too cool, hanging out with a ragtag group of Southsiders, getting rides in people’s shitty cars and going to ‘high school parties’ where the beer tastes like ass and everyone’s high as a kite.

Whatever. FP will be in high school too next year, and then he’ll be at those parties, and Alice will drop the high and mighty act. Probably. Anyways, they have actual history, unlike the losers she hangs out with now because they give her free booze and rides home from school. She made out with him this summer. Granted, they were more than a little tipsy after drinking a shit-ton of her mom’s vodka (okay, they were really fucking wasted), but still. They kissed. 

They didn’t do anything else, and he felt like shit when he woke up the next morning on her bedroom floor, but it was still cool. She tasted so good. He’s thought about it almost every day since then. She’ll let him do it again, he knows she will. She likes him. She probably likes him. She has to like him, she knows him, she knows what he’s like, and he knows her. That’s just the way things work out in a small town. Everyone gets with someone they know, because everyone knows everybody.

After a few minutes, Mrs. Andrews notices him lingering, and reluctantly lets him in. He sits down at their ‘breakfast nook’ and accepts the pumpkin cookie she offers him with very little shame. At least she’s still willing to feed him. He can hear Fred thundering around upstairs, opening and closing doors, probably looking for his costume. Mr. Andrews comes in from the living room, takes note of FP’s presence, and gives him The Look.

He doesn’t dislike Fred’s dad, but he doesn’t like him either. He’s just there. He has the kind of voice and distinguished grey hair that makes you sit up straight and shut up. He’s not loud or angry like Dad, just… strict. FP is surprised he hasn’t told Fred to get the hell away from him yet. Maybe he has, and Fred just doesn’t listen. “What do you boys plan on doing tonight?” he asks gruffly.

“We’re just gonna get some candy and ride our bikes,” FP glances up at him quickly and then averts his gaze, neck prickling uncomfortably. 

“I want you back here by ten, Fred,” Mr. Andrews directs this at his son, who has just come into the kitchen, Freddy Krueger mask in hand. “You hear me? I know it’s a Saturday, but you two shouldn’t be out that late. People get up to all sorts of nonsense on a night like this.”

“Yes, Dad,” Fred says obediently, if not very enthusiastically, and hugs his mother. “We gotta go before all the good houses are out of candy. See you!”

“Stay out of trouble,” she calls after them as they slink out the back door. “I mean it, boys!”

It seems like everyone between the ages of ten and eighteen is out in full force. It’s well past seven, which means all the little kids have been ushered back home to watch cartoons and count out their collections, but everyone else whose parents aren’t control freaks is busy running wild. Bikes skid by, groups of girls squeal and shriek as they dart across the road, and someone is blasting “Thriller” from a car stereo. 

FP and Fred split the carton of eggs Fred smuggled out of the fridge while his mom wasn’t looking, pegging mail boxes and car bumpers and darting up to the occasional front door if the house’s lights are off. FP takes particular glee in hitting up the Doiley homestead, since that geek Daryl’s dad has threatened to shoot him like twice. Talk about a fucking nutcase. Once they run out of eggs, which is tragically quick, they do drop the miscreant act and attempt to secure some candy. The fact that they’re just wearing masks and are too old to be cute wins more than a few sidelong glares. 

They’re sitting on the curb of some vaguely familiar street, stuffing their faces and ignoring the chill in the air, when FP hears the sound of an engine. He looks up to see Lodge’s car idling several houses down, roof rolled down, him and a few of his cronies presumably waiting for some chick to come out of the house party. In the meantime, they’re hassling the girls sitting in front yard smoking. 

“Lemme take you for a ride, baby!” someone drunkenly yells at a tall brunette; she flips him off and sashays back inside, dragging her Cleopatra-esque costume along with her. The remaining girls aren’t really in costume, unless you count the dark clothes and even darker makeup. FP squints in their direction, watching as Hiram tries to beckon one of them over like a fucking stripper. 

“Find someone else to suck your dick, Lodge!” one of the girls finally raises her voice, and FP and Fred both tense and glance at each other. It’d be hard not to recognize it.

“Is that Alice?” Fred mutters in concern. “What the hell is she doing there?”

“Not sucking Hiram’s dick, I guess,” FP pops another tootsie roll into his mouth, and ignores the sudden lurching in his gut. It’s none of his fucking business. She’s not his girl, they’re not dating, and she’s been a little snot to him lately. Let her deal with those assholes. She’s clearly capable of standing up for herself. 

But Hiram and his gang don’t seem to have retreated; if anything, FP can tell Hiram’s pissed from here. He takes a few strides forward from the car, and throws the cigarette he’d been smoking directly at Alice, who jumps back. He’s not yelling, but FP vaguely makes out ‘watch your fucking mouth, bitch’. Yeah, that sounds like Hiram. Ever the gentleman in the light of day, ever the piece of shit in the dark of night.

Fred stands up; FP stares at him. “What’re you doing?” Leave it to Fred to want to go charging in to play the hero. Nevermind that they’re both thirteen to Hiram Lodge’s sixteen, and despite their recent growth spurts, not exactly a match for a bunch of high school juniors and their Corvette. No matter how shitty it looks.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Fred replies curtly, and starts down the sidewalk, chin raised defiantly. FP stays where he is for a moment, and then Alice yells, and he’s up like a bolt, easily outpacing Fred, and arriving on the scene first. 

“Don’t touch me!” Alice is shoving away a leering Marty Mantle, while one of her friends has run inside, slurring her boyfriend’s name.

“I didn’t know Southside girls were such prudes,” Marty sneers, flushed red with cheap beer and embarrassment at being rejected by a freshman girl in front of his buddies.

“This one isn’t,” Hiram is fishing around in his leather jacket pockets for another cigarette. “I heard all about her from Danny. She likes to talk a lot of shit, but once you get her in the sack-,”

“Fuck you, douchecanoe,” Alice spits at him. “I never slept with Danny!”

“Yeah, I buy that,” Hiram rolls his eyes, then takes sight of FP and Fred. “Shit,” he abandons the search for a cigarette. “It’s the fucking welcoming committee, huh?”

“The fuck you looking at, Andrews?” Ray Lopez barks at Fred, whose hands are balled in fists at his sides.

“Leave them alone,” Fred snaps.

“Alice, come on.” FP grabs at Alice’s hand; her mascara is running and her hair is a mess; he’s not sure whether that’s on purpose or not. She shakes him off, glaring. Why does she always have to be so difficult? Like it’d kill her to suck it up and do what someone else tells her for once. 

“What, is this your boyfriend?” Marty asks mockingly, sniggering. “How old is he? Ten?”

Alice jabs a middle finger in his direction, then glowers at all of them. “Get a life, assholes!” She moves to stalk off, but one of the guys makes a grab at her short skirt. She shrieks with rage, and promptly elbows them in the face, with a sickening crunch on impact.

FP turns on his heel, and plows his fist into Mantle’s stomach. Fred swears, and then valiantly charges Hiram, who actually takes a step back in shock before they both plow into the Corvette. People start screaming, and other guys stream out of the house, hooting and cheering, and soon the fight has devolved into an all out brawl with no discernible sides, just drunken teens tackling each other to the ground and pummeling.

FP manages to slip away from Marty soon enough; the perks of being sober, he supposes, and regroups with Fred, who’s sporting a brewing black eye, and Alice, who’s missing her shoes and silently furious, halfway down the street. They start cutting through backyards in case Hiram is out looking for them now, and after hopping their second fence, FP finally snaps.

“The fuck were you thinking, sitting out there by yourself?”

“Excuse me?” Alice retorts. “Newsflash, it’s a fucking party, FP. People sit out and smoke. I get that you’ve never actually been to any parties, but-,”

“He just means those guys were drunk, and it could have been bad,” Fred interjects in exasperation, eying both of them with obvious frustration. “You should have gone back inside when they pulled up.”

“I’m sorry, since when do I take orders from you, Freddy?” Alice mocks, although FP takes it as a good sign that she doesn’t try to smack the everloving shit out of either of them. She’s like a cat in that regard; she’s drawn blood multiple times, left scratches up and down his arms. Usually he doesn’t mind, much. It’s even kind of funny, seeing her get so worked up.

“Fine,” FP throws up his hands. “Next time, we’ll let you handle it, and see where that gets you-,”

He spoke too soon; she takes a swing at him then, and although he dodges it and manages to pin both her arms with one hand, it does at least lighten the tension. Fred cracks up laughing, and after a few moments Alice seems to loosen up a little and lets slip a small sly smile of her own. “Yeah, yeah. Guess your balls finally dropped, huh FP?”

“Hey! What about Fred?” FP snorts, letting go of her once he’s sure she’s not gonna claw his eyes out.

“Eh,” Alice shrugs and darts ahead of them, swiping his mask. “Jury’s still out in his case.”


	4. Chapter 4

AUGUST 1989

Alice hates her waitress uniform, but if she gets caught pinning the skirt up or leaving the top unbuttoned one more time, she’s fired. And there’s already a Smith family history of not being able to keep a job at Pop’s- he finally got tired of Mom’s bullshit a year and a half ago, and she’s been cleaning houses in Riverdale and the next town over ever since. Alice can’t complain; Mom brings home slightly more money and slightly less guys, since it’s not as easy to pick up her usual array of losers, creeps, and assholes when she’s not working the diner. Now she mostly just fucks married men.

When she was little she used to fantasize about some rich dad materializing out of nowhere like Daddy Warbucks; he’d scoop her up in his arms and escort her to some limo to be whisked off to his luxurious penthouse in Manhattan. Mom would be left screeching herself hoarse in the dirt, infuriated at Alice’s luck. That was the kind of thing she’d entertain herself with in between the litany of scummy guys drifting in and out of their shitty house, leering at Mom and sometimes at her too. 

She’s been sleeping with a chair under her doorknob and a baseball bat at the foot of her bed since she was ten. Luckily, Mom’s never been able to keep a man around the house for longer than a month. Usually they figure out she’s batshit crazy by then; Shelly Smith’s moods are like a rollercoaster; sometimes she’s up and almost content, watching TV and trying to cook dinner on occasion, asking prying questions about school and if Alice is seeing anyone. Other time she’s down and reeling, especially if she’s coming off a high or drunk, and she’s like a hissing, spitting livewire, all snarly and sparking, ready to rip Alice’s head off at the slightest provocation. 

Maybe she should count herself lucky that Mom never came after her with a belt or a hanger the way FP’s dad would to him. But at this point Alice is roughly the same height as Mom, and potentially weighs more; Mom’s always been stick-thin, almost gaunt, with bony arms and legs and a wiry neck. Usually they just scream at each other and throw things, slam doors and storm out of the house, crushing broken glass and discarded clothing underfoot. Alice is used to it. One day, when she gets into college, she’s going to pack up all her shit and leave Mom bitching and moaning, and Alice will smugly stand in the doorway and tell her exactly where she can shove it.

One day. It’d help if she didn’t nearly fail two classes last year, but she still has two years left of high school. She’ll ‘straighten herself out’, like her guidance counselor keeps suggesting. That doesn’t mean she has to buckle down and live like a nun, though. Come on- she’ll be sixteen in September. This is probably one of her last carefree summers, hot as it is. And cliche as it is… Alice has never been very good at being good. She grimaces at her reflection in the mirror one more time, adjusts her black scrunchie, and purses her bright red lips.

A car honks obnoxiously outside, and she yells, “I’M COMING, JESUS!” out her open window, before shutting off her clattering old bedroom fan and stomping downstairs in her Doc Martens. She snatches up her battered leather purse and shuts off the TV before rushing out of the house, slamming the door shut behind her. 

Trixie Topaz is drumming her nails impatiently on the steering wheel of her beat up Datsun Cherry. She pops the bubble in her gum as Alice clambers into the passenger seat alongside her. Trixie is eighteen, a fresh drop out and effortlessly cool in overall cut-offs and haphazardly dyed red curly fringe. She took Alice under her wing when she started working at the diner in April; Trixie’s been working there for two years, and usually the first one to beat a guy senseless with a broom handle for getting handsy with a server.

She’s also a Serpent, which is way cooler than Alice is willing to admit. It’s not like she doesn’t know plenty of gang-members, but they’re mostly guys. Alice looks down on them; she might be Southside gutter trash, but at least she’s not Southside gang trash. But with Trixie… she can sort of understand the appeal. No one fucks with Trixie. No one cat-calls her, no one even hits on her who she doesn’t want, all because of the tattoo on her wrist, a hissing black snake winding around the brown skin of her arm.

Trixie has never directly pressure her to join or anything, but she’s dropped her share of hints. Says the Serpents are like her family, that they watch out for each other, that she’s never alone. She always has the guarantee of a safe place to sleep, a roof over her head, food and booze and weed if she wants it. That the Ghoulies are getting more ballsy, and that she doesn’t have to deal with them anymore since joining. Plus she’s dating Frank Fogarty, who’s about six foot two of solid muscle and tats, so that probably helps.

Right now, she’s just Alice’s ride to work. “Like what you’re doing with that eye shadow,” Trixie snorts as she casually blows a red light, cranking up the radio. “Very David Bowie.”

“Shut up,” sniffs Alice, who leans out the window a little, letting the wind pummel her face. “I don’t have money to get any new stuff ‘til my next paycheck, and my mom fucking stole that perfume I borrowed from you.”

“Shit,” whistles Trixie under her breath, “What, should I have Frankie wait for her in a parking lot or something to get it back?”

“She’d blow his eardrums out with her bitching,” Alice scoffs, and then glances at Trixie in the rear-view mirror, at how utterly relaxed and at ease she looks, now and all the time. She wonders what it’s like to feel like that every day. No anxiety or tension or resentment, just… being. 

She clocks in to start her shift at six o’clock sharp, and spends the next two hours juggling trays and plates and taking orders, plastering on her best attempt at a peppy smile, and resisting the urge to roll her eyes when people ask what their specials are. It’s Pop’s. There are no specials. They’ve been serving the same goddamn food since 1953. Jesus H. Christ. You’d think this was some new outlet. At around eight she stiffens as Hermione Gomez and company waltz in, taking a booth in the back and settling their cardigans around their shoulders like it’s fucking afternoon tea and not a greasy joint that serves burgers and fries. 

“I’m changing the music,” she tells Trixie, who shrugs and goes to take their order instead.

Hermione is dating Hiram now and certainly looking the part; those pearls around her neck and the diamond earrings don’t seem like any of the cheap knock-offs most teenagers have. Her parents probably threw her at him just to scurry up another rung in the social ladder. Their darling little Hermione, a Lodge. She’s with Penelope Blossom, who is supposedly a distant cousin to that smarmy asshole Cliff Blossom, and of course the meek little hanger-on Mary Walsh.

Alice switches the song playing from “The Look” to “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, and goes to seat yet another lovesick couple who are pawing at each other. People are so fucking typical. She’d never let herself get like that over a guy, all starry-eyed and blushing at him like he was some god. Of course, that’s not exactly difficult to avoid, since the only real ‘guy’ in her life is FP, who is… well, he’s FP. 

And she’s Alice. Together, she doesn’t know what they are, but they spent an hour making out in the back lot of the Twilight Drive-In last week. He’s still annoying as hell and cocky as anything now that girls are actually starting to pay attention to his little bad boy in leather act, but she’d be lying if she claimed he wasn’t a damn good kisser. 

But speak of the devil and he shall appear, right? No sooner has she finished thinking about him than two familiar figures strut through the door. Fred is going through yet another growth spurt and all but guaranteed a spot on the varsity football team this year, despite the fact that he’ll only be a sophomore. Big man on campus and all that. 

He’s got a newfound swagger in his step now that he’s not that chubby little Andrews kid anymore, and FP slinks after him, hands in his denim jacket pockets, jeans just tight enough that more than one girl pauses mid-sip of milkshake to stare. He loves it; she can tell by the way he loosens his shoulders and strides into walk, lifting his head a little.

Smirking, FP flags her down while Fred raises a menu as if they’re not in here every other night. Fred must not mind paying for FP, because lean and mean as he is, the boy can pack it away like a linebacker. It must be all the cigarettes keeping the weight off. God knows the only real exercise he gets is running from the cops, the football team sans Fred, and from Ghoulies. 

“What can I get you dicks- I mean boys,” she says snidely as she stops in front of their booth, a hand on her hip.

“Fuck, I should report you to management for bad service,” FP drawls, his gaze momentarily pinning her before she wrestles her eyes away to glare at Fred, who’s badly suppressing his snickers. “You know, foul language and all.”

“You think this is bad service?” Alice shows some teeth behind her painted red lips. “Man, you’re in for a hard-knock life, kid.”

“Why don’t you meet me after you get off and make it up to me?” he suggests, smirk widening, and Alice arches a plucked eyebrow and laughs too shrilly. “Only in your sad little dreams, Jones.” Fred snorts aloud at that, and she whacks him with a menu.

“Jesus, Alice, you’re working here,” he complains, rubbing at his head.

“Yeah, yeah,” FP grouses, and then finally gets around to placing their order. He swipes at Alice’s hand as she turns to go, and she lets his long fingers clench around her wrist. She likes it more than she’s willing to admit, wishes he’d try it more often. Just so she could teach him a lesson, of course. “Come on, when do you get off for real, Ally?”

“I told you not to call me that,” she hisses, but with less fire behind it than usual. “I have work until eleven when we close, dumbass. Told you a million times.”

“I got a shitty memory,” he lets go of her wrist, and Fred rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath, to which FP soundly kicks him under the table. 

Alice huffs in amusement and puts their order in. When she comes back with their drinks Fred has migrated over to chat up Mary for the umpteenth time, who is pretending not to be nearly as interested in him as she is. Alice finds her as annoying as ever, but she can’t really fault her- Fred’s a ‘catch’ by Riverdale standards, and any girl who hooks up with him will at least know he’s probably not going to cheat on her, and if he knocks her up, will definitely insist on marrying her.

Alice has never been interested; he’s a little too brawny for her tastes, but if he’d ever seemed like he’d go for it, she’d have no shame in jumping on him. Fred Andrews might as well be the prince of fucking England compared to her. He’ll have a nice house and a nice wife and nice kids someday, and probably a dog and a two-car garage too. And even when he’s fighting with his wife or mad at his kids or having a shitty day at work, it will still be a million times better than her best day. 

FP pulls her down into the booth beside him, and drapes an arm over her shoulders as a few more guys come in. “Can we get some service here?” one demands, and FP just looks at him and smiles with all his teeth, and they approach Trixie instead. 

“You’re gonna get me fired,” Alice points out, but makes no attempts to leave his side. She can pretend for a few minutes that they’re here on a date. That they’re from nice normal stable households and that they have dinner with each other’s parents all the time and go down to the city every summer to see concerts and go dancing. She can pretend they’re going to college together in a few years. They’ll have a spring wedding and loads of bratty, adorable kids.

She almost makes herself chuckle with her little concocted fantasy, and then FP, as usual, has to go and ruin it. “I’m doing my initiation next week,” he says, and she wrenches away from him, the vinyl of the seat pulling at her sweaty legs. “What the hell, FP? Do they even let in little boys?”

“Fuck off,” he says irritably, but looks more irritated that she’s standing up now, straightening her rumpled skirt and swiping up a few menus. “Come on, I’ve been talking about it for months, Alice. It’s easier to join in the summer, anyways.”

“Why?” she snaps, “because getting the shit kicked out of you will hurt a lot less when it’s still hot out?”

He glowers at her, then composes himself, smoothes out his face. She hates it when he does that. She’s not some ditzy freshman he’s going to pull a fast one on- ‘pretty please can I put my hand up your skirt, Alley-cat?’ “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Tall Boy says I’m ready.”

“Tall Boy’s a crackhead, not your new daddy,” she nearly shouts, and she can feel the heat of several onlooking stares on them. She flushes slightly. “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want, but don’t expect me to be there playing cheerleader.”

He looks as though she slapped him. “Trust me, no one wants you anywhere near a pair of pom-poms,” he sneers in return. “Sides, the squad’s full up on skanks in fishnets.” A girl audibly gasps, Fred says loudly, “FP, dude, what the _fuck_ -,” and Alice smiles mockingly at him, snatches up his half-dranken chocolate milkshake, and throws it in his face.

FP sputters in shock and wipes at his eyes and mouth as it drips down his greasy hair and face and the front of his ratty jacket and tee shirt, and Alice turns and stalks off into the kitchen before anyone has time to say anything else.


	5. Chapter 5

NOVEMBER 1989

FP is more observant than most people (adults, teachers, Serpents) give him credit for. Tall Boy says he’s got good intuition. Fred says he’s insightful, which is like an SAT word. Dad says he’s a skulky little fucker. And it’s true. As much as FP enjoys any attention, be it positive or negative, he is most comfortable on the sidelines. He’d much rather like people like Fred be the bright light everyone is drawn to, while he watches and waits in the dark. It feels safer that way.

That said, he sees Alice joining the Serpents coming from a mile away, as much as he doesn’t want to. It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion or something. Yeah, she had her little shit fit when she found out he was joining, but even after three weeks of not speaking, she came around, just in time for the last of his scrapes and bruises to fade away and for his tattoo to appear. It was never that Alice hated the Serpents. She just hated the idea of him being more devoted to some(thing) other than her.

Alice is greedy, when it comes down to it. Greedy for attention, greedy for affection, greedy for absolution. Just like him. And they’ve always done everything together. She could stick her nose up in the air and prance around in her little waitress getup all she liked, but sooner or later she was going to come sniffing around the Whyte Wyrm. A month into his sophomore year and her junior, her mom takes off with some guy and goes AWOL. She gets fired from Pop’s around Halloween.

By November, she’s told Trixie to put her on the list for a Serpent Dance at the Wyrm. FP has always thought it was sort of a joke- guys have to get beaten in to join up, but girls get off easy. They get up on a stage and shake their ass and wriggle their hips and flash the crowd a couple times, and that’s that. Done and done. Frank Fogarty is the one who ends up telling him that the dance ends with the girl picking a guy from the crowd to ‘initiate’ her. They’re not in until that happens.

“Shit,” FP, fifteen and stoned and more than a little wasted at the time, had slurred, “so all I had to do was let you fuck me, Frankie, and I coulda avoided the broken ribs?”

Frank had punched him in the shoulder and then gone back to making out with Trixie in the back of his pickup truck. 

So it is different. There’s reason there’s only about a dozen female Serpents, maybe less. Getting your ass kicked is one thing. Stripping down to your bra and panties and picking a guy out a crowd filled with jailbirds and white trash and druggies is another. He can’t really blame girls for being a little more hesitant to join up. He sure as hell would be. 

But he can’t exactly go off on Alice for deciding to join and risking looking like a filthy hypocrite, or worse, like he actually gives a fuck. They’re not together, frequent to first and second bases notwithstanding. The last thing he needs is a girlfriend. Especially not a girlfriend like Alice, who would chew him and up and spit him out. The second he admits to wanting to make things ‘serious’ or ‘official’ he looks like a massive pissy. And he knows she’s thinking the same. Neither of them is willing to put themselves at a disadvantage like that. They’re not morons. 

So on a cold, rainy night in November, FP joins the throng of patrons in the Wyrm, avoiding the broken glass and cigarette butts scattered on the grimy floor, and watches two girls dance before Alice is up. The music is so loud his ears are ringing, and it’s hard to even hear any of the lyrics over the jeers and catcalls from the crowd. The half-naked girls on the stage, neither of whom can be much older than eighteen or nineteen at the most, turn into skin-colored blurs as fling bras into the crowd and whip their hair around like they’re in a music video.

He thinks he’s probably expected to get off on this, at least a little bit, but he sees past their gritted smiles and flushed faces, and all he can think of is Alice waiting somewhere in the wings, probably picking at her nails and running through her ‘routine’ under her breath. Her body doesn’t hold many mysteries for him. They’ve both seen each other naked before, even if they’ve never fucked. They’ve been swimming and changed hastily and walked in on one another half-dressed. They’ve gotten their shirts off before while kissing, pawed at each other’s chests and legs and asses.

But then she comes out in a cut-off fringe top and Daisy Dukes, wobbling slightly in borrowed heels that are too small for her, and he stops thinking so… pragmatically. He stops thinking at all. Alice squints in the spotlight and runs her hand through her tangled blonde hair, pulls out her trusty scrunchy, lets it fall to the ground. Her legs seem impossibly long and her face seems impossibly bright, stained a greenish bluey red from all the neon lighting around the bar. It casts a weird halo around her head, like some kind of futuristic angel. 

The opening notes of “Armageddon It” start up, and Alice moves in a frenzy that’s sometimes sultry, sometimes desperate, but mostly erratic and whip-like. She doesn’t so much as coyly smile and wink but bare her teeth at the crowd and close her eyes as she shakes under the spotlight, toeing off both heels and dropping down nearly to her knees before winding her way back up again. The audience is too drunk at this point to really notice; she’s just another girl shimmying in front of them, glistening with sweat, reeking of cigarettes and loud perfume.

A few guys, mostly teenagers, edge towards the stage to grin at her meaningfully, but FP stays where he is, on a stool, a slippery drink in hand, staring. Alice isn’t looking at him or at anyone; she’s in her own little maelstrom, swinging her head this way and that. She kicks off her shorts, then tears off her top. Her underwear is black and clearly new. She probably bought it with Trixie at the nearest mall, forty minutes away. Her imagines Alice fidgeting in a fluorescent changing room, picking out what to wear for a gang initiation while other blonde girls gossip in the food court and eat french fries. 

FP thought he’d feel angry or possessive or just embarrassed. He thought he might pity her, but what he mostly feels is a deep lump of sadness in his throat, and he’s not sure why. He’s used to being upset with Alice or wanting to kiss Alice or wanting to hit Alice, not feeling sad for her. It’s different from pity, he’s not looking down at her because she’s a girl or because she’s a bitch or because her mom left her and is maybe never coming back. He just feels sad when he looks at her and he doesn’t know why. Sadness isn’t really a useful emotion so he’s never bothered much with it. He was sad when his mom died but he was a little kid then, and now he’s not.

He takes another sip of his beer but ends up spitting it out on the floor. No one notices. The song fades out and Alice stops her strange dance, shaking with adrenaline and nerves. She starts to wrap her arms around herself and to shy away from the cheering crowd, then stops. Instead she squints out into the dim recesses of the bar. Someone helps her down from the stage and men swarm around her. Alice shrinks a little before bristling, and then looks around as if for a life preserver.

FP puts down his shitty beer and pushes his way through the gawking crowd to her. “I choose him,” Alice says loudly, without so much as looking to him for confirmation, and grabs at her his hand. Her freshly painted nails, long and red, dig into his sweaty palm. Her eyeshadow is smudged and her mascara is a little smeared. She has some glitter flecked into her hair. A general roar of approval goes up, because FP is well-liked for never shying away from a fight and for generally being pretty good at selling weed to his classmates, and he wraps an arm around her waist.

Alice leans into him unsteadily, and they make their way into a darkened back room. For once he thinks she might actually be more plastered than him, and he likes to maintain a continual buzzed state, just to take the edge off. “I need a cigarette,” Alice says hoarsely, and he gives her one and lights her up. She is barefoot, and hops up, haltingly, to sit on an old pool table, puffing away. She wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand.

“You were good,” says FP. What is he supposed to do? Congratulate her? Should he have brought her roses? The thought makes him snort a little, and she stares at him, before taking another quick drag. Her hands are shaking. She blows a smoke ring, and he sits down. Waiting, he guesses. He’s not sure how to go about this. He fiddles with his belt, and the jingle of the metal makes her visibly flinch. 

“Right,” says Alice, and she drops her cigarette.

“Fire hazard,” says FP sardonically. That’s something former boy scout Freddy Andrews would say, but Fred’s not here right now. If he were he’d probably be horrified. Good girls are supposed to have sex in the back of nice cars and under the football bleachers, not after a strip-tease in the backroom of a bar filled with bikers. He’d tell FP to give Alice his jacket or something and take her home. But she doesn’t have a home. She has a house her mom hasn’t paid any bills for in two months.

Alice approaches him now, staring at something past him, and straddles his lap. FP sits up a little, like an eager dog waiting for a treat, and leans in to kiss her. Alice jerks back, mouth twisted up. “Don’t,” she mutters. “Let’s just get it over with. I’m cold.” He runs his hands up and down her bare arms and feels the skin prickle and the hair stand up underneath his touch. He doesn’t try to kiss her again. He struggles with her bra, and feels her tense. She turns away slightly but doesn’t try to stop him.

“Ally,” he says, not sure if he’s annoyed or disappointed or still just sad.

“Sorry,” she whispers, and turns herself back towards him. “Sorry. I’m being stupid.” She undoes the bra herself and tosses it aside. They look at each other, and FP looks at her bare chest and then at her face and the way her eyes are wet in the light of the exit sign. He turns her around so her back is to him and rests his chin on her shoulder.

“We don’t have to,” he says, uncertainly.

“Yes, we do,” Alice’s voice trembles and she scratches anxiously at his knuckles with her fake nails. “Come on. I know you want to. You’ve wanted to for years, FP. Come on. I won’t be a prude about it. I’m sorry-,”

“Stop,” he says. “Just stop, Ally. Okay? What- what kind of guy wants to fuck someone who’s shaking like a leaf and saying sorry every five seconds?” He feels a bit nauseous. “This- this is fucked up anyways. Okay? They- they shouldn’t even make you do this. You did the dance. You proved yourself, alright? Jesus. I’m not gonna-,”

“You’re not making me,” she says in a small, very young voice, and he suddenly feels older, despite the fact that she’s sixteen to his fifteen.

“I’m not,” he replies, and it comes out too easy. “Because we’re not doing it. I’ll say we did, okay? They don’t know. They can’t prove we didn’t. We’ll just wait a while and then go out and you look embarrassed or something and I’ll act like a douchebag. And we’ll just say I initiated you.”

“You… don’t want to?” Alice asks after a moment, guarded and wary.

“No shit I want to,” he mumbles. “But not like this. Not when you’d hate me after. You know you would. I’m not doing that to you.”

She sits there for a few moments, stiffly, and then relaxes. “Okay.” She shivers. 

FP takes off his jacket and gives it to her, cursing chivalrous, smugly right Fred out in his head all the while.


	6. Chapter 6

APRIL 1990

Alice hasn’t cut class once this week, which has to be some kind of new record. On the other hand, she’s severely tempted to leave during lunch and not come back. It’s finally warm enough to eat outside again, which means everyone with a sixth period lunch has scattered across the courtyard outside the cafeteria and the nearby football field. She can just make out a few familiar figures smoking surreptitiously under the bleachers. 

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she starts to make her way in that direction, bag of chips that comprises her lunch in one hand, until a familiar voice calls her name. With a slight grimace, Alice turns on her heel to see Fred waving her down from a table slightly apart from the rest under a tree. FP is sitting across from him, unsurprisingly, and Mary Walsh is blushing at Fred’s side, just as unsurprisingly. Tom Keller and Sierra Samuels are sitting at the other end of the table.

Alice debates this for a few moments before walking over, plastering a cocky smirk on her face as she sidles down beside FP, who promptly leans over to kiss her. They still don’t refer to each other as ‘my boyfriend’ or ‘my girlfriend’, but everyone and their mother knows that they’re rarely apart, especially now that they’re both Serpents. Alice’s own snake tattoo peeks through the rips in the thigh of her black jeans. FP starts to introduce a little tongue before Alice snorts and pushes him off her. 

Fred looks vaguely embarrassed, Mary both repulsed and fascinated, and Sierra is rolling her eyes and muttering something to Tom, who promptly barks with laughter. “Something to say, Sarah?” Alice snaps, purposefully butchering Sierra’s name. Sierra is a sophomore like FP and Fred, whereas Tom is a senior who plays varsity baseball and primarily dates girls dumb enough to make him look like a future Rhodes Scholar. Sierra is an abrupt departure from this; she’d be a nerd if she wasn’t so good-looking (and mouthy).

Still, Alice has to give them credit where credit is due: they have some balls. Sierra’s not the only black girl in their school, but an interracial relationship in a town like Riverdale isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. Maybe they’re not in some southern podunk town with people flying the Confederate flag on their trucks, but ‘Not In My Back Yard’ might as well be this town’s middle name. The adults might not say anything in public, but behind closed doors…

“Yeah,” says Sierra. “Fuck off.” She arches a plucked eyebrow and takes another delicate bite of her salad. 

Alice flips her off, rolling her eyes, and pops open her bag of chips, swiping one of FP’s french fries in the meantime. “Freddy buy you lunch again?” she mocks gently. “Damn, it’s like something out of Pretty Woman.” 

Mary giggles at that while Fred shakes his head in exasperation, and FP narrows his eyes at her before grabbing a few of her chips. “Last time I take you to the drive-in, bitch.”

“You didn’t even drive us there, pussy,” she sings under her breath, still delighting in the fact that she’ll have her license this summer and he won’t. Now if only she had a car in her future. Maybe if she sucks up to Dan enough, he’ll get her one. Dan is Mom’s new boyfriend, who’s apparently dragged her mother out of the depths of addiction and dysfunction into something approaching a normal working class existence. Mom came back with him shortly before Christmas.

Alice started sleeping in the house again in January, after ascertaining that he probably wasn’t a serial killer. She can’t imagine who would willingly shack up with her mother, who may only be in her early thirties but who has aged drastically in the past five or so years. Hey, they say drugs will do that to you. DARE was right about something. Alice doesn’t trust Dan, nor does she particularly like him and his vaguely churchy youth group leader ways, but she does think he’s ripe for manipulation.

All she has to do is keep up the aloof teenage girl act without being too much of a bitch to him, which isn’t exactly hard.

Lunch passes for the most part in fairly peaceful terms. Fred talks about sports and the upcoming dance and the concert tickets his parents got him and Mary to go see Nirvana in three weeks down in the city. FP and Alice simmer in a mixture of rabid jealousy and bemusement at the idea of parents giving actual gifts and not bruises. Tom talks about college with Sierra, and tiptoes around the fact that he’ll be gone come August. 

It’s almost a good time had by all until Marty Mantle walks by and throws his slushie, purchased off-campus against school rules, directly at FP’s back. It only partially drenches his thin tee-shirt; the rest spatters over Alice and Fred, while Mary recoils in shock. Tom abruptly stops talking, and Sierra whips around in her seat, gaping. FP sits very quietly beside Alice, red ice running in rivulets down his neck. Alice runs her hand through her now sticky hair. 

“You are so fucking dead,” she hisses, getting to her feet. 

Marty grins at her, unrepentant and preening before the onlooking crowd of jocks and cheerleaders. “Yeah? Jones, you gonna let your slut fight all your battles?”

“Shut up, asshole,” Mary says loudly with sudden viciousness, catching Alice off guard. She looks entirely different scowling than she does with her usual shy smile.

But FP has gotten up, shaking his head a little like a wet dog. Alice glances at him and sees the the glint of the knife coming out of his jacket pocket. “Don’t,” she says quickly, because as much as she wants to see Marty get his ass beat, if FP pulls a knife it’ll be an automatic month’s suspension and a disciplinary hearing. He could go to juvie for that. 

Fortunately, Fred is faster, years of football sending him bounding over the table like Superman clearing buildings in a single leap. He collides with Marty, sending them both to the pavement, and FP put the knife back, rolls back his shoulder, and circles for a moment, looking for an opening, until Marty is on top. Then he gets in a savage kick, leans down, grabs a stunned Marty by the hair, and goes to town. A few other guys rush into Mantle’s defense, and Tom comes to Fred and FP’s aid, ignoring Sierra’s yells for him to stay out of it.

Alice ends up leaving early after hitting someone across the face with a lunch tray, preferring playing hooky to spending an hour in the principal’s office and then another hour in after school detention. She arrives home to an empty house, to her relief, and spends the next few hours blasting music and somewhat apathetically looking for job openings in the paper. If she has to take a job at the Twilight, she will, but she’s not looking forward to working the concessions stand.

Dan gets home before Mom, who has picked up work again as a cleaner. Alice listens to him puttering around in the kitchen and turning on the TV before she hears him come upstairs. She gets up out of force of habit to close her bedroom door and suddenly he’s right there. “Woah,” he says with a little chuckle. “Wasn’t sure if you were home or not, Ally.”

Alice tenses, wishing he hadn’t picked up that particular nickname from Mom. “You didn’t hear my music?” Admittedly she doesn’t have a stereo or a TV in her bedroom like some people and the radio is a bit tinny, but-

“Guess not,” he says, still leaning against her door frame, and Alice is suddenly very aware that her top shows a good three inches of skin above her jeans. She shifts from one bare foot to another uncomfortably, and folds her arms across her chest. If he’s looked at her like this before, she hasn’t noticed. She blames herself for letting her guard down, for not being as paranoid because he seemed like ‘a nice guy’, if an idiot.

“You really are such a pretty young woman.”

“Okay,” she tries to sound unconcerned and sarcastic, and moves to close her door. He blocks it with his foot, takes a step into the room, forcing her to dart backwards. 

Dan is still smiling that placating smile, as if everything is fine, just a simple conversation, as if she doesn’t know what he’s thinking. He’s probably been working up the nerve to ‘make his move’ for months. Sick fuck. Mom really does know how to pick ‘em, Alice thinks, frantically looking around. Her gaze settles on her familiar baseball bat, tucked under the foot of her bed. No. It’d be too easy for him to wrestle it away from her. He’s not a big guy, but he’s certainly big enough to easily overpower a skinny teenage girl.

“Get out of my room,” she says. 

Dan looks at her as if she’s joking, doesn't make any sudden moves but doesn’t retreat either. “Come on,” he says, “I just want to get to know you better, Alice. We’re family now.”

“I don’t think family acts like this,” Alice snaps, suddenly more infuriated than frightened. How dare he. How dare he try to dangle the promise of ‘family’ in front of her like a treat, like that will appease her. She has a family. She has the Serpents and FP. She doesn’t need some perverted creep to try to swoop in to play daddy in the hopes of copping a feel, or worse.

Dan moves to close the door behind him, and Alice takes advantage of him turning slightly to hurl her bedside lamp at his back. It shatters against him and he staggers and bellows in pain, and Alice scrambles up and onto her desk and out her open bedroom window, scrambling onto the porch roof and shimmying down the side with practiced ease, even in bare feet. She can hear Dan yelling from upstairs, but she doesn’t stop. She runs into FP’s front yard, looks for his dad’s truck, and seeing it gone, hammers on the front door, praying he’s home and not at the Wyrm or out with Fred.

Dan doesn’t come bursting out of the house after her, and after a moment the door slowly opens. Clearly stoned, FP stares at her in confusion before she practically wraps herself around him, causing them both to stumble back into the house. “What’s wrong?” he finally settles on, wrapping an arm around her. He has a black eye and a busted mouth from the fight today, but she doesn’t care. She wants him to pull that knife on Dan and cut his goddamn dick off.

But the words don’t come out and for once in her life Alice feels helpless, stammering and breaking down into tears. FP peers up and down the street before closing the door behind her and taking her upstairs, where nearly an hour later he manages to get the whole story from her. To her surprise, he doesn’t immediately go charging out next door, even after he’s sobered up. Instead he sits there, expressionless, listening intently, and when she’s done he kisses her forehead like she’s a kid.

Alice sags against him and calls herself stupid and pathetic for not staying to beat the shit out of Dan herself.

“Shu up,” says FP. “You’re not stupid. You didn’t tempt him or provoke him or whatever your mom tells you about the scumbags she dates. You’re just Alice. They want to hurt you because you’re stronger than them. You’re stronger than everyone. You’re stronger than me.”

It’s probably the nicest thing he’s ever said to her, not including what he says when they’re in bed together. She starts crying again, to her embarrassment, and he just holds her, and then they go downstairs and call Trixie and Frank, who pick them up and take them to the Wyrm, where Alice relates an abbreviated version to Tall Boy.

Dan’s car gets run off the road two days later, and he spends about a week in the hospital before taking off. Mom is heartbroken. Alice is unapologetic. She moves in with Trixie again. She falls a little more in love with FP, which is very dangerous, because she has loved him the best she knows how for a long time but been unable to admit it to herself. She takes the SAT and does much better than expected, and starts to get ideas about college scholarships.

Things seem as if they might be looking up, which should always be taken as a warning sign.


End file.
